


the woods are lovely, dark and deep

by soldier-dean (badaltin)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 10x14, Episode: s10e14 The Executioner's Song, Gen, Mark of Cain, Post-Episode: s10e14 The Executioner's Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 14:10:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3731800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badaltin/pseuds/soldier-dean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean struggles with the Mark of Cain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the woods are lovely, dark and deep

Sam closes his eyes and turns his head. Dean can hear his muffled gasp, the way his throat closes around it almost painfully. The foliage around him shifts as his younger brother recoils, out of shock or disgust, he can’t tell. He knows that Sam can’t force himself to look down at the blood-soaked dirt.

The shifter’s index finger twitches once, twice, before falling still.

Dean’s fingers twitch around the knife in his hand. 

He can feel the air flow thick and heavy out of Sam’s mouth, as if he wanted to speak but couldn’t.

He’s seen the way they all look at him nowadays. Sam and Cas and Charlie dance around him like he’s a feral dog, afraid to get too close to his russet-colored teeth. What can any of them do but rot in their boots, digging through texts on the altar of ‘finding a cure’ as if the Mark were a nasty infection?

Nothing, breathes the shifter, a fluid whisper escaping its blue, clam-like lips.

Dean’s arm trembles, not with the desire to kill that’s haunted his every waking moment for weeks, but with satisfaction.

He wishes he could look away from the gore, but he can’t. Crimson rivers run from deep canyons in the monster’s flesh, artfully orchestrated by the Mark and its endless desire to paint everything in red.

“Dean-“ Sam starts, and cuts himself off. The silence echoes between the trees, reminding Dean distantly of the forests of Purgatory. There, this sort of brutal act was commonplace – expected, really - of the inhabitants. There, no creature would look twice at the mauled corpse. 

(They’d be too busy running from the monster who put it there.)

From the ground, the shifter’s glassy gaze meet’s Dean’s stony one. The body looks up at its murderer with cold eyes, terror still marring its features in death.

Dean’s voice is like crunching dry leaves, throat clicking with the effort. “I – I got the shifter.”

Death hangs low like a fog, clogging his nose and filling his black lungs up with smoke. The Mark tugs gently at the back of his mind and pumps poison through his veins. His arms are filled with sand and don’t seem able to move from his side, a marginal shift from their merciless actions not five minutes before.

Sam approaches him like one might a wounded animal, and it hurts Dean more than the sting ringing through his knuckles and the bruises along his ribs. Sam carefully helps Dean up to his feet, and steps away almost immediately. 

Dean’s mind is whirring restlessly, and it’s impossible for him to focus on anything beyond the tree line. 

There’s a dead man lying crookedly on the ground, and he can’t find it in himself to feel remorse or disgust. It’s done something bad, Dean reminds himself, something awful to deserve such a violent death. It had to have deserved this.

Sam’s hands are clenched in tight fists, though they remain steady and strong. Dean looks down at his own hands, and almost forgets to cringe. The blood lines the seams of his skin and is embedded beneath his raw fingernails. They shake uncontrollably, and won’t cooperate. He remembers when he was a young man, how his hands were capable and confident and weren’t stained so badly that he can barely see the freckles underneath. 

For a minute, he forgets where he is, and he wonders if he can ever make his hands clean again.

Sam won’t meet his eyes. He stares at the road, away from the lifeless monster masquerading as his brother and the broken shifter lying at his feet.

He walks away. Towards the Impala, probably.

There’s a bottle of Jack Daniels in the trunk; Dean knows this. There’s a couple of shovels, as well, and some shredded rags to wipe at least some of the grime away. Sam will call Cas; Dean knows this. And they will confess their mutual worry over him, as if they don’t know that Dean can hear them.

They will get dinner after they clean up, like they always do, hardly speaking over their food. They will head back to the bunker, and Sam will linger outside of Dean’s room and pretend that Dean doesn’t know he’s there. He’ll eventually retreat to the library, and continue his fruitless search through the same ancient texts they’ve poured over thousands of times before.

Dean knows this. He sighs.

He looks down once more at the mess he’s made, and can’t help but think of one of the few memories he has of Before, where he painted the kitchen counter with his mother’s home-made spaghetti sauce. He had smiled then, looking up at Mary with pride in his gleaming eyes, and returned to his work.

The corners of Dean’s lips pull up in the shadow of a smile, and he heads to his car for a shovel.

**Author's Note:**

> For more of my writing, follow me at http://migrantdean.tumblr.com/


End file.
